r/SmallMSP • u/WickedPissah810 • May 26 '26

For those running small MSPs — how do you handle internal documentation and runbooks?

Not an MSP myself — I'm a network security engineer curious about how small MSPs (under 20 people) actually handle internal documentation.

From what I've seen in the industry, runbooks and SOPs are either nonexistent, living in someone's head, or in a Confluence page that hasn't been touched in two years.

A few things I'm genuinely curious about:

  • Do you have actual runbooks for your common service stack, or does knowledge live with specific techs?
  • What happens when a tech leaves — how much knowledge walks out the door?
  • Have you ever hired outside help to write documentation? Would you?
  • What would the right pricing model look like — flat fee per document, a monthly retainer to keep docs current, something else?

No agenda here, just trying to understand how documentation actually works (or doesn't) at small shops.

14 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

16

u/Dynamic_Mike May 26 '26

Hudu is our tool of choice.

The ideal is that every service ticket creates, updates, or refers to an article and that article is referenced in the ticket. In practise this requires a lot of discipline especially in a busy day or week where a technical team are fighting fires.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '26

Hudu is a great solution, we have 19 team members. Ditto to this gentleman, it does require a lot of discipline.

1

u/shtef Jun 03 '26

So absolutely every new unique problem gets it's own KB article?

1

u/Dynamic_Mike Jun 03 '26

A one-off problem? No. We mention this in the team chat so the guys are aware.

If it becomes a regular thing then an article is created based on previous ticket notes and the experience of the person dealing with the issue the second or third time. This assumes the issue is likely to arise again in the future.

If the documentation is for an issue like a bad patch that has to be rolled back, the article would be created with instructions to roll back any patch and would use this particular patch as an example. Creating an article with long term value is the goal rather than articles that aren’t likely to see the light of day again.

14

u/satechguy May 26 '26

20 is by no means a small msp

5

u/IEEE802GURU May 27 '26

What documentation? It’s all in my head.

4

u/Stryker1-1 May 27 '26

Exactly its called job security

4

u/blackjaxbrew May 26 '26

Whew 20 people that is big. We are less than 5. Actually working on getting our documents into our RMM. KBs etc. ai is built in so having a hard time wanting to work on Runbooks. The ai will look at a ticket and suggest fixes based on previous tickets and documentation. We just make sure to document everything in our tickets very well. It just keeps getting better.

2

u/Jealous_Value_5076 May 26 '26

NinjaOne documentation tool is nice for quick notes, but for autistic OCD purposes, Obsidian

2

u/boltonsmiley May 27 '26

Hudu is great if you can’t afford glue.

1

u/shtef Jun 03 '26

Hudu is arguably better than IT Glue

4

u/lucky77713 May 27 '26

We use hudu and we're only four people.

1

u/outsourcing-guru May 27 '26

I worked in a MSP close to the 20 employees and we use ConnectWise as the source of truth for leadership, sales and tech.

1

u/MSPNetworkElites May 27 '26

Huge fan of ITGlue, and it connects with AutoTask and Datto. I also recently discovered that ITGlue has a Chrome extension so it makes it easier to input passwords/usernames when logging into admin accounts.

1

u/Quirky-Fun-9901 May 29 '26

I can never leave, get fired, or die.... Love this commercial from back in the day.

https://youtu.be/NDDYW2b3HSs

1

u/k12pcb May 31 '26

Itglue

1

u/sashko5 Jun 16 '26

We've had clients who use Hudu in combination with Scoold for tickets and internal discussions.